Thin Air: (Shetland book 6) (22 page)

Sandy nodded. ‘You think it might be important?’

‘We won’t know until you speak to her!’ Immediately Willow felt guilty, because it wasn’t Sandy who had provoked her anger. ‘And, Jimmy, perhaps you can talk to Lowrie. It’s become more important now to know what contact he had with Eleanor before the party. If she spoke to Charles Hillier before she came here, she’ll have known that the nursemaid in the Peerie Lizzie story was Lowrie’s relative. She would surely have wanted to talk to Lowrie about that, either in London or here.’

Perez nodded and returned to the notebook.

A silence. Now the light was fading. Willow wondered how Perez could possibly see to read. She reached out to switch on a lamp and his face was transformed into a series of planes and shadows. She felt an irrational urge to touch his forehead, because in the artificial light it looked hard and smooth like metal. He looked up and caught her eye and she turned away. She’d been caught staring like an awkward teenager.

‘I wonder if Eleanor had already found Sarah Malcolmson’s daughter,’ he said. ‘There’s a name here on the page after she’d contacted David and Charles. Monica. No surname even. I can’t see how she might feature here, other than as a part of the Unst ghost story.’

‘Any contact details?’ Willow leaned forward, but found Eleanor’s handwriting impossible to read. Perez must have spent hours working through the book, becoming accustomed to its eccentricities.

‘No, perhaps she’d only got as far as tracing the name.’

‘Something else for us to work on tomorrow.’ She stretched, suddenly exhausted. ‘I’m away to my bed. I wake up so early here and I need some sleep.’

Perez didn’t move. She saw that the notebooks had become an obsession. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘you need to rest. It’ll wait until tomorrow.’

Then he did look at her and, like an obedient child, he got to his feet.

She woke early, as the sunlight filtered through the crack in the heavy curtains onto her face. So at least the fog had cleared. She made tea and showered. Yoga, a ritual from her childhood in the commune, and then she felt ready for the day, suddenly full of energy and optimism. Today there would be a break in the case. The kitchen was unusually quiet. No David. No smell of coffee. Willow had a sudden panic that the men had run away, packed a few things into their car and taken the first ferry out; even that they had left the night before. Perhaps their questions about Eleanor had frightened them off. She hadn’t seen them since dinner; later in the evening she’d collected a supper tray from the kitchen herself. They could be south to the mainland by now on the first plane to Aberdeen. Though she couldn’t conceive what reason either of them might have for killing Eleanor Longstaff.

It was still too early for the real guests to appear for breakfast, and downstairs the house was empty. She walked through the grand entrance hall and tried to imagine what the place had been like in Gilbert and Roberta Geldard’s day. There’d have been more servants. Someone would already be up sweeping the floors, lighting a range in the kitchen, and the big front door would be thrown open to let in the air. Perhaps Elizabeth had been unable to sleep because of the bright sunshine, even so early in the day. And she’d run out through the open door down to the shore to play. Then a mist had rolled in from the sea without her noticing and the tide had come in and surrounded her. She’d been stranded on a sandbank and drowned.

Willow followed in Peerie Lizzie’s path, through the wide front door and out into the garden. No mist today. Bright sunshine and a gusty wind blowing the shadows of the clouds across the water. There was, though, a figure on the shore. A silhouette against the light, not identifiable at this distance. She thought it was probably Jimmy Perez, that he hadn’t slept either and was standing looking into the middle distance and brooding about his lost love. She supposed she shouldn’t disturb him, but decided she’d made allowance enough for his grief.

She walked down the grass track and through the big stone pillars. Wide flagstone steps led to the shore. The man was crying. His back was turned to her and he was quite silent, but she could tell from the movement of his shoulders. An oystercatcher called from the sandy grass as she disturbed it by walking to the beach. She’d known as soon as she’d left the garden that this wasn’t Perez. This man was older and his hair was shorter, lighter. She hesitated for a moment, reluctant to intrude on his private grief. He must have sensed her watching him, because he turned suddenly and stood quite still until she reached him. It was David Gordon, tears and mucus streaming down his face. He’d always been so private and dignified that the sight was shocking. She supposed that Charles had left him. Nothing else would account for such disorder, the filthy face and dishevelled clothes.

‘Chief Inspector.’

‘Mr Gordon, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize at first that it was you. Would you rather that I left you alone?’ She was tempted to mention the possibility of breakfast – yoga always left her feeling hungry – but decided that might be insensitive.

‘No! Come with me!’ He sounded completely distraught and she wondered if he was having some sort of breakdown, thought this was the very last complication that she needed.

She saw a line of his footprints in the sand. He was wearing rubber clogs and the prints were quite distinctive. He’d obviously come from further along the shore and now he set off back in that direction quickly, like a dog following a scent. She followed, stopping briefly when the sand was very wet, to take off her own shoes.

Charles Hillier was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, close to the tideline. It was not long after high water. His hair and his clothes were dripping. He was fully dressed in the trousers and shirt he’d been wearing the evening before. There was no immediate sign of injury, but he was clearly dead.

‘You see!’ David cried. ‘I was coming to tell you, and then suddenly it hit me that I’d be alone for the rest of my life and I broke down. So selfish. So dreadfully selfish. Not to be crying for Charles, but for myself.’

Willow took in the scene. There was no chance they’d get Vicki Hewitt or James Grieve to Unst before the next high water, so they would need to move the body – Vicki was fastidious about maintaining the integrity of the crime scene, but even she would accept the need for action if the alternative was the corpse being sucked away into the North Sea by a particularly big tide. She pulled out her phone. Miraculously there was a signal. She phoned first Perez and then Sandy. She told Sandy to ask the remaining two guests to find alternative accommodation and to suggest that they leave Springfield House as soon as possible. They were an elderly couple from Bedfordshire; she already had their contact details and they were too frail to walk as far as the beach. Certainly they’d have been incapable of killing Charles Hillier, if this turned out to be murder. She asked Perez to join her on the shore. Sandy was full of questions, which she ignored. Perez asked none.

So she and David Hillier stood on the sand waiting. She didn’t want to send him back to the house alone, and she couldn’t leave Charles’s body to the mercy of gulls, rats or dogs. He stood staring out at the water. ‘I should never have forced Charles to come here,’ he said.

‘He seemed perfectly content, happy even.’ She supposed this was what the man wanted to hear, but she thought it was true too.

‘He was an actor,’ David said. ‘That was why he made such a good stage magician. He could make people believe whatever he wanted them to. He wanted me to believe that he was pleased with the move. But I knew he was bored. He needed more drama in his life than Shetland could give him.’

‘Perhaps it was enough for him to know that
you
loved it here.’

There was a silence. David didn’t respond to that. ‘How did he die?’

She thought he must realize that she could have no more idea than him. ‘Was he ill?’

‘No. Horribly fit. I was the one who did all the exercise and was careful about what I ate, but he’d never had a day’s illness.’

‘Then we’ll need to wait for the post-mortem.’ In the far distance Willow saw Perez appear from the front door of the house and lope down the stone steps. She felt like the sheriff in an old cowboy movie, waiting for the cavalry to appear on the horizon. ‘When did you last see Charles?’

‘Last night. I went to bed early. There was live music in the bar, but our manager deals with that. He’s local and he’s very good at running the Thursday events. I assumed that perhaps Charles had popped in to see how things were going. I’d been working in the garden all day and I was exhausted. I went straight to sleep. When I woke early this morning I realized Charles hadn’t come to bed and I came looking for him. I searched the house first. Then I came out into the garden and saw something on the shore. It was that blue shirt. I recognized the colour, but I couldn’t believe it was him until I got here.’

‘Was it unusual for him to be up all night?’ Willow knew all this should wait until she had another officer with her and could talk properly to David as a witness, but it would be unbearable to stand here in silence, and all information was valuable. A small fishing boat came round the headland followed by screaming gulls.

‘Yes, but it wasn’t unheard of. He loved popular old television – it probably reminded him of his glory days – and if there were repeats of obscure sitcoms on BBC4 he’d sit up and watch until the early hours. Sometimes he’d fall asleep in the armchair and still be there in the morning . . .’ David’s voice tailed off.

‘And last night?’

‘Last night he went out after dinner. Sometimes he was restless. Perhaps he felt trapped here and just needed a sense of movement. He took the car and came back about an hour later.’

‘Did he say where he’d been?’ Willow tried to understand this relationship. Had these men discussed what they wanted from the partnership, or had each been so careful about his partner’s privacy that they’d simply tried to guess what had made the other happy?

‘He said he’d been for a drive. The fog had made him feel trapped and he needed to get out for a while. When I went to bed early I hoped he might follow me up and that we might talk.’ At last David turned away from the sea and faced her. He’d stopped crying. ‘For a while I’ve had the feeling that he’s been keeping secrets from me. Making plans. When I woke and he wasn’t there, I wasn’t surprised. I thought he’d run away.’

Like Eleanor
, Willow thought.
Caroline thought that she was planning to run away from her partner too.
She couldn’t think what else the two dead people might have had in common.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Perez walked back to Springfield House with David Gordon and wondered what he might say to provide comfort. Certainly nothing about his own experience of bereavement. When Fran had died and people had shared their own stories of grieving he’d wanted to hit them, to scream,
I don’t care if someone close to you died. Don’t use my tragedy to wallow in your own. You cannot come close to knowing how I feel.
But he
had
wanted to talk about Fran and to say her name.

‘Where did you and Charles meet?’

David spoke without looking at him, to a background sound of waves breaking on the sand. ‘Quite by chance in a cafe in York. It was the summer and the place was busy with tourists. I was living there, and Charles was performing at the theatre. His television career was already finished by then, but he was still able to pull in the crowds in provincial venues. There was a seat at his table and I asked if I could join him. “Excuse me,” I said. “Don’t I know you?” He was thrilled to be recognized, though honestly I don’t think I’d ever seen him on TV. Later I realized that he looked very like a colleague from Leeds, and that was who he reminded me of. But we talked and there was an attraction even then. He offered to leave a complimentary ticket for me at the theatre for his performance. I thanked him, never really intending to go. Not my thing. Charles always said I was a snob. But I was at the box office an hour beforehand and I knew I’d be devastated if the ticket wasn’t waiting for me.

‘After the show we went for a meal. And I suppose that was it. We’ve been together as a couple ever since. I carried on living and working in York, but Charles stayed with me whenever he wasn’t working. Then he was offered fewer tours and I found teaching increasingly less attractive, so we decided on early retirement and a move north. Charles loved the drama of the grand gesture. And for a man used to life in the city, running off to Unst was pretty dramatic. He was passionate about the house and enjoyed supervising the refurbishment. But when that was complete there was just the everyday tedium of running and maintaining a place the size of Springfield. He was starting to be bored. We’d always planned to leave Shetland in the winters and do some travelling, but the house soaked up all our spare cash and I’m sure he felt trapped here.’

They’d reached the steps that led through the terraced garden. David paused for a moment, not to catch his breath – he was obviously very fit – but to remember. ‘I’ve never told anyone else that story.’ Another pause. ‘But then nobody has ever asked.’ They stopped at the front door. ‘What will happen now?’

‘Willow has already contacted the funeral director in Lerwick,’ Perez said. ‘Charles will go south for post-mortem. You met James Grieve, the pathologist. He’s great at what he does.’ He hesitated. ‘Very respectful.’

‘What do think killed him?’ It came out as a strangled cry of pain.

‘Dr Grieve will help us to know that.’ Perez remembered a conversation with the pathologist, late one night. Another case. They’d had dinner together and shared a bottle of wine.
My patients aren’t the dead, Jimmy, but the living relatives. My responsibility is to them.
At least there was no mystery about what happened to Fran, he thought. I was there. He had a sudden flashback: the lightning glint of a knife in moonlight. A scream. He thought not knowing how she’d died would have been the worst kind of torture.

Sandy was waiting for them inside. ‘I found rooms for the other guests in a B&B in Yell and booked them onto the ferry. They left five minutes ago.’ His voice was almost a whisper, but David wouldn’t have heard if Sandy had shouted. He was lost in memories of his lover.